Columbia Banking System, Inc. (NASDAQ:COLB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Clint Stein: Thanks, Jon.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from Chris McGratty from KBW. Your line is now open.

Chris McGratty: Great. Thanks. Just a question on credit. Obviously, you guys have unbelievable credit numbers. One of the conversations that’s taken a lot of our time as analysts recently is just office? So, I was hoping you could speak to kind of your thoughts on that portfolio. It looks like it’s about 10% or 11%. Maybe some characteristics, the underwriting statistics, anything you’re particularly concerned about, that would be great. Thank you.

Clint Stein: Good morning, Chris. I’ll start, and we’ll take maybe a team approach to answering your question here. I’ll start by saying our metrics you saw in the release continue to remain pristine. I think this is the first — probably the first earnings call in 18-plus years that Andy McDonald hasn’t been. On Andy is skiing someplace in Idaho right now. So, I think, that in itself is a testament to how we’re thinking about credit. Specific to the office space, some of the — a lot of the kind of urban core downtown-type office buildings, that’s not really the type of things that we have in our portfolio. And so, I think there’s a little bit of a significant difference between what you’re seeing in, let’s say, Downtown Seattle and Portland and some of the other areas that we’re in from an occupancy standpoint. But with that, I’ll pass it over to Chris, and he can give you some more details.

Chris Merrywell: Sure. Chris, you mentioned in our underwriting sense of that nature, it hasn’t changed. I mean, we’ve always been fairly conservative by nature. We’ve talked about that in the past. What’s changed is when you look at the portfolio and you stress-test it towards higher rates, we’re very comfortable with what we’re seeing there in the credit side. And anything new that’s coming on to you, being stressed at even higher rate. So, when you look at the ability of a borrower to withstand potentially if rates were to go up further, values were to come down, we’re working on lower loan to values overall, certainly in the portfolio, never been a max proceeds lender on anything new, and, again, stressing the portfolio to those higher rates, we’re not seeing anything. And as Clint mentioned, we’re not really in the markets where you’re seeing the headlines of businesses pulling out, turning back-office space and things of that nature. That’s really not our niche.

Chris McGratty: Okay. Thanks for that. Aside from office, I mean the wall of worry is high, I guess, broadly on the economy. Where else would you be spending more time just stress-testing within your portfolio?

Chris Merrywell: Well, actually, everything that’s stress-tested. Not seeing any — I mean, there’s not any early warning signs that we’re seeing. I think from conversations with Andy, there’s an eyebeam kept on it. When we do our provision with Aaron, we’re certainly looking at economic indicators and the unemployment and things of that nature. But I guess you would say we’re keeping an eye on what may happen with some of these large companies and doing some downsizing and some layoffs. But again, when you hear some of those numbers, these are companies that are not only across many states, but they’re multinational. And so, it doesn’t mean it’s all affecting an area right down the street from us. But we are looking at those types of things. Haven’t seen anything that’s popped up yet in any reviews or any of our testing.